Faith (33 page)

She looked diminished. Her hair was lank and greasy, the scars on her face and forehead from the neural implants had not yet healed, and her eyes were larger and duller.

“Smithson,” Foord called over his shoulder, “damage reports?”

“Moderate structural damage to rear ventral hull. Manoeuvre drives severely impaired to port, moderately impaired to starboard. MT Drive shut down and inoperable. And we’re covered in shit.”

“How long?”

“Another five hours. But we can’t completely restore the port manoeuvre drives; they’ll still be ten percent impaired.”

“And Faith?”

“No change, Commander. She’s stationary at the inner edge of the Belt, and out of beam range. At asteroid CQ-504.”

“What’s She doing there?”

“It’s strange, Commander, She’s—”

“No, leave it. I remember, you told me before…” He turned to Kaang. “You see?”

She blinked up at him. “What, Commander?”

He pointed to the Bridge screen. “What She’s done to us.”

She saw, though it took her a moment to adjust. The screen was subdivided into a mosaic of smaller screens. Each one showed views of the ship from outside, transmitted to the Bridge from remotes floating under, over and around the hull. The hull itself was swarming with figures, human and nonhuman, living and mechanical and synthetic. Apart from the six (now five) on the Bridge, the
Charles Manson
had a crew of fifty-seven. About thirty, Kaang estimated, were on the hull, outnumbered by mechanicals and synthetics.

The slender delta shape at first looked, as ever, perfect and inviolate; until random stabs of the arc-lights from the working parties threw into sudden relief the jagged edges of damage, mostly around the rear and port sections. Kaang could see the gashes and striations which, suddenly lit then dark then lit again, seemed to pulse like infected areas. And as her eyes adjusted further she saw where the hull was streaked and daubed.

She resumed her seat at her console. She seemed to grow back a little, but only a little, into her normal shape and identity.

“Thahl’s rerouted the pilot’s functions back to you, Kaang.”

“Yes, Commander. You told me.”

“He
has
rerouted them back.” Foord spoke as if he had to be certain of that before he could say anything else to her, about anything. “We have a lot to do. Now you’re back, we’ll begin. By saying goodbye to Joser.”

•

They waited for Foord’s signal. When he gave it, each of them—including the synthetics and mechanicals—stopped working on the hull and turned to face the nearest remote, so that back on the Bridge Foord could see them all looking into the screen. The sealed capsule containing Joser’s body was ready for ejection through one of the ventral airlocks.

Like most of those on the
Charles Manson
, Joser had no family or relatives—or none with whom he kept contact—and had elected, In The Event Of My Death In Service, for burial in space. The nine Outsiders had standard words for such occasions. Foord spoke them over the comm.

“Before he was born, he already existed. As a set of possibilities. As something unknowable. While he lived, he was the visible tip of that same thing. Now let him return to it, and still exist. Perhaps.”

Joser’s capsule ejected from the rear ventral airlock, and drifted away.

Faith’s first victim went out in the same direction as that taken by Her third missile, after it impacted the ship. The missile had collapsed its molecular structure, become an irregular inert object about three feet across, and drifted away. Nobody felt disposed to follow it. Joser did, now.

•

“You added a word to the standard service,” Kaang heard Smithson say to Foord.

“Perhaps,” Foord said.

“Yes,” Smithson said. “Perhaps. It’s not in the service.”

“Perhaps it ought to be…. Is the comm still on?”

It was. Work had not resumed. All over the hull, they were still staring into the Bridge screen.

“This opponent,” Foord said into the comm, “is like none we’ve ever encountered. Before we finish repairs and go after Her, I want us to consider Her. To consider what She is.”

“Commander,” Cyr began, “this isn’t—it won’t—”

“It
is
and it
will
. This is important. I have my reasons. You’ll see.”

The figures on the hull were motionless. All of them, including the mechanicals and synthetics, seemed to be listening intently.

“Kaang, you start. What is She?”

“Commander, what’s happened while I’ve been away?”

“What do you mean?”

“Our orders said destroy Her and ignore what She is.
You
said that. What’s happened to make you change?”

“I’m sorry, Kaang, it was unfair to start with you. I’ll come back to you later, but listen and you’ll see why I’m asking….Thahl, what about you? What do you think She is? Is She from the Commonwealth, maybe a rebel?”

“Perhaps, Commander. But a ship like that—”

“Like what? We’ve been fighting Her all this time, and we haven’t
seen
her yet.”

“We know what She looks like, and we know some of what She can do, from records of previous engagements…She’s not a Commonwealth ship.”

“Or maybe She is, but just not one that we know of.”

Thahl paused. “Then maybe we
don’t
know what She looks like. She can bend and confuse scanners. Maybe how she appeared in previous engagements isn’t how She really is.”

“Maybe. So what is She?”

Thahl thought for a moment, then glanced up at Foord.

“Maybe She’s been secretly built and funded by some of the I2Js,” (he meant those Invited To Join) “to strike back at the Commonwealth.”

A ripple of something, perhaps amusement, went through the Bridge. It was impossible to tell, from the heavily-suited figures on the screen, whether whatever it was had been echoed outside.

“Better,” said Foord. “But it’s not what you really think…Smithson, what is She?”

“How about something made secretly by the Commonwealth to eliminate Outsiders? You know what they think of us, Commander.”

“Much better,” approved Foord. “I like that one, it’s so self-obsessed and so paranoid. So: Kaang.”

“Commander?”

“What is She?”

“I wish I could take part in this, Commander, but you know I can’t. We agreed. I’m only a pilot.”

“Come on, Kaang.”

“I really don’t know…perhaps your suggestion, that She’s some kind of rebel.”

“Too obvious, and She’d need a better pilot. She’d have tried to recruit you…Cyr, what is She?”

“Do we have to go on with this, Commander?”

“Yes. What is She?”

“Maybe She really is just an alien. Maybe this is the first real threat we’ve ever known. The first of many. Maybe this is the start of a war, against the first enemy we’ve ever met who can really match us.”

“She came here three hundred years ago, Cyr. It wasn’t the start of a war against Sakhra.”

“It didn’t need to be. Whatever She did was enough for Her to leave and let Sakhra decline.” She glanced at Thahl, who remained expressionless. “The Commonwealth is bigger. Maybe a war is more appropriate.”

When the silence on the Bridge had grown long enough to be uncomfortable, Cyr added “You did ask me. And it’s what we all heard back on Sakhra.”

“And is it what
you
think?”

“Yes, Commander, because it’s the most likely. The best fit.”

“Except that the Commonwealth has ordered
us
to engage and destroy Her alone. Just
us
.”

“That doesn’t make it untrue.”

“It doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not, Cyr.”

“Oh? Then what is all this about, Commander? You told us—”

“To
consider
what She is. Not discover. Not decide.
Consider!
Consider all the explanations, because all the explanations, whether they’re true or not, tell us the same thing.”

“Do
you
have an explanation for us, Commander?”

“Yes, I think She’s an alien. But not like you described, Cyr. Something quite different. Perhaps…”

“I meant an explanation for your behaviour here, Commander.”

“…Perhaps what we’ve been fighting all this time isn’t even a ship. Perhaps it doesn’t have a Commander, or crew, or pilot. Perhaps it’s a single life-form, evolved to live in space like a fish in water. Or a marine mammal, which looks like a fish but preys on fish. Yes: it looks like a ship but preys on ships.”

“And how,” Cyr inquired politely, “does it prey on ships? Does it eat them?”

“Absorbs their energies,” Smithson offered. “You know, feeds on their feelings of mortification, after it’s defeated them in various elaborate and enigmatic ways.”

“Yes! And,” Cyr went on delightedly, “and its drives, its scanners, its beams, its missiles, all the things that make it look like a ship, they’re evolutionary mimicry.”

“You see? It’s getting better. You’re adding details. Building internal consistencies.” Foord stood up and gazed round the Bridge. His gaze was almost feverish, but it had something almost like certainty. Kaang saw each of them, herself included, try but fail to hold it.

“All the explanations, even the wrong ones—even that last one of mine, which is the most wrong—tell us the same thing. Even the explanations we haven’t thought of yet, when we think of them, will tell us the same thing.”

Abruptly, he turned and walked back to where Kaang sat at her console. As before, he went around the walls rather than directly, kicking debris as he went, and when he reached Kaang he towered over her.

“Let’s recap. A renegade who hates the Commonwealth, and strikes at
us
because we’re its most dangerous instrument. A resistance force from the I2Js who hate the Commonwealth, and strike at
us
because we’re its most dangerous instrument. Something made by the Commonwealth, because the Commonwealth hates
us
and strikes at
us
because we’re its most dangerous instrument. Something from another civilisation, the first ever to threaten the Commonwealth; and it strikes at
us
because we’re its most dangerous instrument. You see where this takes us?”

Kaang felt the base of her neck aching as she stared up at him, trying to read what was in his face.

“We’re alone. Trust nothing. Trust nobody. We’re all we’ve got.”

He glanced at the screen. The comm was still working, and none of the figures on the hull had moved. And Kaang, who didn’t yet understand his meaning but had started to sense it from his voice, felt her scalp tingling.

“This is why I don’t care who or what She is. I never have and never will. We’re an Outsider, one of only nine, and we’re alone. The Commonwealth created Outsiders as its ultimate weapon. It kept them outside normal command structures. It named them after killers and loners. It crewed them with killers and loners, people unable to fit normal social structures, but too brilliant and too valuable to discard.

“And when they came into those nine ships they brought only their abilities, and nothing else. No shared culture and no friendship. They were alone together. The other eight are still like that, but we’ve encountered Her and it’s made us different. And this is why we can destroy Her. Because we know what we are.”

On the screen, in the distance, there was a brief and silent flare. The required standard period had elapsed and Joser’s coffin ignited, returning him to the set of possibilities he had always been. Perhaps.

“We’re going after Her. We’ll repair the structural damage and drives; but the surface damage, stays as it is. The shit over the hull, stays as it is. The Bridge, stays as it is. We, stay as we are. We’ll taste and smell each other. This is what we are.

“Joser won’t be replaced on the Bridge; we’ll share his duties. And when we next face Her, it won’t be for Joser, or the Commonwealth, or friendship or professional pride, it’ll be because of what
She
made us. She was right: everything outside this ship is an illusion, and it hates us. Or She was lying, and everything outside this ship is real; and it still hates us. We’re all we have, and outside this tin can we can trust nothing and nobody. We’re all there is. Nothing else exists. That, out there, is painted scenery.

“We’re no longer an Instrument of the Commonwealth. We’re an Instrument of Ourselves.”

9

For once
, thought Smithson,
Kaang was ahead of everyone
. She had sensed Foord’s meaning before anyone else—even before he, Smithson, sensed it. He saw that shudder, that frisson, go through her
before
Foord said Instrument of Ourselves. Afterwards he saw it go through everyone on the Bridge, and everyone outside on the hull, and he’d felt it go through himself; his long grey body, with its almost random construction, visibly rippled. Nobody cheered—this was, after all, still the
Charles Manson
—but Foord’s words had an impact. They had gone everywhere.

When Foord finished, most of them just nodded briefly—to themselves rather than to each other, because again this was still the
Charles Manson
—and resumed work. Smithson too. Oh
yes
, he’d said to himself, I can buy some of that. Fuck everyone except us. Fuck the universe. Painted scenery. And, he thought sourly as he looked out from the Bridge at the stars, not even very well painted. Those stars look alive but most of them, by the time their light reaches us, are dead or dying. They look alive but they’re dead. Trust nothing.

The
Charles Manson
nosed its way carefully through the Belt, towards Faith. Her current position was unchanged, and had been for some time, even while Her third missile chased them. She was on the inner edge of the Belt, at the asteroid CQ-504. She could have moved off ahead of them, out of the Belt and deeper into Horus system, and they could not have stopped Her, as She was out of beam range. But She didn’t move off. It was curious, thought Smithson. She seemed to be building some kind of structure there.